Beauty Falls
by Vendelyn Silverhawk
Summary: Eisenheim recalls ambiguously his struggle for life and love and the people he brought down to do it.


There once was an illusionist, a man who created miracles marvelous rare night after night to delight crowds and create rapture in the hearts of all who entered his theatre. He made trees grow from nothing, commanded butterflies to carry the weight of the stars, and created for all to see the heavenly bodies that circle our sun and, within the theatre, circled him. All who saw him remembered his name long after, and all who came after his time knew him. He made in the hearts of man a ridiculous longing for the unknown, the incredible! Every child who saw him perform wished to be like him, every woman dreamed of having a man who could create flowers out of midair. He was dreams incarnate, fantasy, imagination, he was every unspoken desire of every heart, and left behind a wave of wonder and anticipation when at last he moved to the next city.

What no one knew was that this illusionist, known in so many places as simply Eisenheim, was once a boy as ordinary and wishful as the rest, but fate had different ideas for him. A chance encounter started what would begin his reign in theatres all over Austria and Europe, but boyish curiosity, in the beginning, grew to be much more.

Vanishing tricks, sleight of hand, mind-reading- at only fourteen summers he was a master of all, an illusionist made from the son of a cabinet-maker. Yet all the tricks in the world could not occupy him long enough to miss seeing the face of summer itself, of light incarnate- no trick or illusion could hide her face from him, once he had seen it, and he saw it long after she had passed away on her great chestnut stallion.

Sophie, Duchess von Teschen, had captured the heart of young Edward long before he became Eisenheim. He dreamed of her, longed for her, and soon she felt the same way. Love was a dangerous thing for a peasant and a princess, however, so love had to be contained within hidden hearts of wood, and carried away on the wings of butterflies to where they would never be found.

"Make us invisible," she pleaded that night when all seemed dark and hopeless. Her light eyes were shadowed as she knelt within that dark hole that had hidden them during so many lovers' exploits, and she clung to him as if her life depended on it. The voices grew closer. "Make us invisible!" She was so like a child, still believing that Edward could do everything, and a black spot grew on his heart when, upon his attempts, Edward realized he could not.

Torn from the arms of young, naïve, innocent love, Edward was cast out and Sophie locked in, dreams shattered like glass to fragile and easily crushed to nothing but dust to be picked up by the wind and scattered like so many lost dreams are. Traveling to find them and claiming he was looking for solace, Edward ventured to solve every mystery so that he could ignore his own- the mystery of why his heart never went with him out of that town.

And through years did both bitterness and cynical wonder grow in melancholy face of the pale illusionist who knew, more than anyone else, that reality stings most of all. Hair as black as the spot on his heart that kept remembering her, skin as white as the ghosts that haunted him, some nights he truly did not know the difference between magic and engineering tricks up on that stage. It was a thin veil, one that disappeared completely after Sophie came, and was his, and was lost to him behind a barrier even he could not penetrate. Sneering royalty offered her up like a lamb to slaughter and when he showed her physical death in the mirror the audience gasped in fright, for it was not only the mirror form that crumpled like a marionette with strings cut. Indeed she was dead, but with gestures light as the beat of a butterfly's wings and milky soft expanses like snow he filtered the soul of a beautiful woman back into the body as if reanimating a corpse, yet royalty left satisfied that night with not a corpse on its hand, but a living, breathing, remembering woman.

Memories, ah, yes, memories! Those eternal things that pile up and sift like sand through the cracks of our minds and yet remain forever in some dark corner or another. Memories bring people together or break them apart- they are capable of sewing hurts and crossing gaps and crushing hopes for a second and third time. Memories healed Eisenheim's heart that night when he saw, and he remembered eyes green as summer and hair pale and beautiful as wheat and skin more vivid that the brightest rose. Such elegance, such beauty, such poise and compassion in those eyes which belong to an angel, the seraph who remembered him as well. But angels fall, and so she fell into the arms of royalty black and stained with centuries of stinking blood and ambition.

She hung on his arm like a jewel on an Ethiope's ear clad in virgin white that defied the melancholy face which was more sad than haunted, as was his. Melancholy was the love which drew them once again into lover's arms in the warm bronze and gold of lover's light, and ecstatic were the sighs which echoed in the place where memories lie. Plans were hatched and laid down to rest in those places, and when the sun did rise promises were made to resurrect them one day, and so save the angel and bury the ghosts before she fell to deep for him to find again.

And oh, but so deeply did she fall! Into pools of crimson which could not be washed away, into the mad screams of royalty betrayed- into the shattered soul of an illusionist whose reality has finally caught up. Yes, dead, for good this time, and so lost were the wooden hearts carved and detailed so many years ago. The butterflies had let their burden fall with a thud in the midst of a packed theatre, filled with people who did not understand this new Eisenheim who was no longer proclaimed "Illusionist." Ignorance led to excitement at a new show, and excitement gave way to hushed horror and mad sadness on the stage Eisenheim laid his soul bare, so reveal to all- especially royalty- that he could rebuild the strings of fallen marionettes, but not strong enough to make them dance.

Souls were created on that stage for only fleeting moments that, when the spectator emerged, revealed themselves to be hours lost in the night-fallen streets. Souls of the dead which religion claimed were proof of life with God in the beyond, but were really the products of a man driven mad with longing for murdered angel whose blood was dried on royalty's blade. How could they know, these sheep-like people who followed him with the reverence owed to both saint and the devil himself? How could they understand that it was not genius, but grief that drew the souls of the lost to him and that even he did not understand what they were or why they appeared? Children who played on the stage, old women who wandered out onto the streets, proud men who told their life stories… any and all were welcome to use him as a conduit to the living who believed them to be only dead. But it was so long until the one soul, milky and pale and long like satin, appeared, and only after madness had begun to show on his face.

Murdered. She was murdered, she told the audience, and the one whose blade had cut her neck and spilled her blood and made her love wait in the darkness for one who would never come was in that very theatre. Sheep became wolves as accusations flew and hidden tarnished royalty tried to wrap its mind around illusion made real. Eisenheim watched, unconcerned but for the angel whose confused face watched him as he sat, exhausted in the chair. She watched with green eyes flickering as a hand flew to her throat and love made her almost tangible-almost- and horror made her mist.

"The locket. I was wearing it when I died, but now it is lost." She whispered, a voice impassionate enough to cause a hush quieter than death to descend upon the rapidly rioting theatre. She was all eyes for Eisenheim, who reached out a hand with such longing that tears wet his cheeks and almost those of the woman who death had claimed for his own, a lost gift from royalty lacking support. But when fingers touched fingers fell through, and the form wavered as waves upon the shore until she dissolved to nothing that filled Eisenheim's heart with a devouring emptiness and he, too, vanished, before reality's law could chain him.

Royalty was a soul black and malformed, trembling in Death's hand as it realized it had offered itself up with the bullet to the brain, rather than to the brain of justice's ally and illusionist's friend. Murderer was murdered at murder's own hand, and religion left summoned souls to peace rather than Great Awakening III. Sheep returned to flocks of twos and threes but even their brains held long after he was gone images of Eisenheim the Illusionist and Eisenheim surrounded by the souls who sought his stage and his arm, and forever would they remembered the image of the white woman who had looked at him so longingly, the woman- they all seemed to feel- who meant more to him than anyone would ever know.

Certainly, she meant enough to him to drive him away from theatre and pub and all but ghost towns and empty forests, filled with a longing that caused idle feet to carry him until he could go no farther. So he laid amongst clean hay in a rotting farmhouse in a field that looked as happy and picturesque as the rest, but actually harbored a soul sweetened and tormented by love for the angel who he was supposed to lift up and who had fallen instead past all of the devices he had built and planned and ordered to catch her. Over and over again he summoned her to him, over and over again he tried to join their hands and had flesh fall through death's insubstantial curtain, until at last he let the butterflies die and found the wooden hearts, and spent eternity with her in the picturesque field which, anyone can tell you after, never let anyone leave with dry eyes, or without a smile on their face. Such was the sadness and joy of Eisenheim the Man when at last he held her hand.


End file.
